----- Original Message -----
From: "Stephen A. Lawrence" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: A historical walk on the wild side
<snip>
Au contraire. There are just two problems (that I can see) with CF: How
the 2H gets over the coulomb barrier, and how the energy gets out without
shattering the lattice or otherwise exhibiting itself as big lumps of
energy. In an admittedly subjective assessment, those don't sound to me
like things that need anything more than an _extension_ to current theory
in order to explain, and that opinion predates my brief encounter with
Hagelstein's work, which could actually provide such an extension.
New things require additional theory. That's fundamentally different from
saying existing theory is wrong.
The Coulomb barrier is an embedded concept, and a lot of the theory is how
to get around it, including Hagelestein and Takahasi. If you look at HSG,
John Barchek has been nibbling at -- actually quoting notable phyisicists --
problems with SQM. Einstein does not make Newton wrong, Newton becomes a
special case. Mills goes to great lengths to address major observational
issues into CQM; whether he is successful or not I will leave to others.
<snip>
And Steve, if you are familiar with the CF technology, the one paper you
should read is Phillips' paper on the water bath calorimeter, as
published in the Journal of Applied Physics.
Is this online anywhere? I'll sniff around for it.
It is available for a $20 fee from the American Institue of Physics. The
paper was once free on the BLP website, but since it was accepted for
publication by JAP, copyright control has passed to them. v. 56, No. 6, 15
Sept 2004, Phillips, Mills, Chen "Water bath caorimetric study of excess
heat generation of "resonant transfer" plasmas".
<snip>
Yeah, I'm not Bob Park :-) Whether a theory is "accepted" or not makes
little difference; I just want it to be "plausible". Without an existence
proof for the possibility of a theory, I worry.
Yet you have apparently refused to look at the BLP experimental evidence.
Those experiments do not depend on CQM, although CQM led Mills to look for
the catalysts that produce the reactions with hydrogen. There are simple
rules for selecting catalysts. K+ is a catalyst, but Na+ is not, and the
rule does not depend on CQM.
You disagree with Mills' theory, audacious as it is, and deny that the
experimental results are 'real' because work done in other labs with
Mills' advice might somehouw be contaminated.
It depends on how closely involved he was.
In some cases, as with the Conrads paper, he may have given advice, and
professional courtesy would require that he be included as an author. No
evidence that Mills was in the lab fiddling with the dials. Even with the
posted BLP experiments, common sense says Mills directs the work but
others -- PhDs -- do the work.
If Uri Geller were involved in the replication I'd tend to reject it, too.
Well, yes, but the degree of involvement is the criterion. If you are Randi,
you know all the tricks of misdirection. But if someone attempts a
'replication' but actually does something else because he 'knows better',
does that count?
<snip>
Well, try Conrads' paper: Emission in the Deep Vacuum Ultraviolet from a
Plasma Formed by Incandescently Heating Hydrogen Gas with Trace Amounts
of Potassium Carbonate H. Conrads, R. Mills, Th. Wrubel, Plasma Sources
Science and Technology, Vol. 12 (2003), pp. 389-395. You will have to pay
a fee to download this from the publisher's website.
OK, thanks, I'll look into it.
To put the Conrads' work in perspective, go to the BLP website and go to
Process/Key to References. Just below the line is an illustration of the BLP
thermal reactor with some thumbnails which will enlarge to give different
views. Conrads used the essential elements -- a hot iron surface to
dissociat H2 to 2H, a titanium surface to dissociate potassium carbonate,
and saw the hot plasma. Using sodium carbonate, removing the titanium,
removing the iron, and the plasma does not appear.
<snip>
Perhaps I was not clear. Of course commercial test lab results are part
of many experiments, and I would generally assume the commercial labs are
on the up-and-up. The point is just that commercial test lab results on
samples provided by Mills do not provide "independent replication" of his
results (unless, of course, the test result is, in itself, without
reference to the prior history of the sample, anomalous in some way).
1) Many of the early experiments were essentially "build some equipment this
way, run it and tell me what you get". 2) The tests of the hydrino-bearing
compounds were, I believe, anomalous in some way.
The tritium results in CF experiments generally come from test labs.
They're interesting because they're part of the experimental results. I
don't reject them because that sort of result has been achieved by many
researchers in broadly similar experiments. HOWEVER, if _just_ _one_
researcher had had samples that showed tritium after a CF run, and if that
researcher had money riding on the outcome, I'd wonder if the sample had
been spiked before the test lab ever saw it. And that's all I was trying
to say here.
Of course, and that is almost what Taubes said in his book. Not quite, but
close enough for the casual reader to assume that the tritium results were
spiked. tritium has been found by others, so Taubes is creating
disinformation which others are willing to believe.
Because of all that is riding on Mills' work, every test is applied with
great severity. It is too easy for someone to write "I wonder about...."
without actual study of the experiment. I have been at pains to subject such
criticism to the same scrutiny demanded of Mills. What I find is that the
criticism of experiments is often carelss and glib. Such as been the history
of CF as well.
Mike Carrell
